Projects

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The project’s ultimate goal is threefold. First, we will deliver a broad but accurate and relevant snapshot of vulnerable travelers in California. Second, we will use that information to carefully consider how different forms of congestion pricing might improve or degrade equity. Third and most important, we will use lessons from other safety net programs, and particularly those operating in the utility industry in California, to propose specific safeguards for poor and marginalized populations that can be built into congestion charging programs. We examine the fairness implications of congestion pricing and propose policy mechanisms to mitigate its potential unfair outcomes. Our project first empirically establishes the broad contours of travel by vulnerable populations in California’s major metropolitan areas. We then examine particular forms of congestion charging, and evaluate how they might affect equity. Finally and most importantly, we draw on models of the guardrails instituted by other public utilities to illustrate ways to have congestion pricing while still protecting low-income travelers.

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For decades evaluation of the benefits and costs of new- or re- development in urban areas has centered on the effects of development on nearby traffic flows. Historically, and in most states outside of California, the level-of-service (LOS) scale has been used to approve or disapprove commercial developments. The logic of such an evaluation model is that smooth traffic flows are a primary goal of urban areas, which has the effect of discouraging the sorts of densely developed places that are more easily accessed by foot, bike, shared mobility, and public transit. To overcome the traffic flow focus of traffic impact analyses, the California legislature passed SB 743 in 2013, which mandated a change in the way that transportation impacts are analyzed under CEQA. New CEQA Guidelines were created to replace LOS with a new focus on how proposed developments affect vehicle miles of travel (VMT). This translational project will build on prior research, as well as the burgeoning literature on operationalizing access into transportation planning and engineering to develop and test some new analytical tools to evaluate the access impacts of developments.

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Over 3,500 people have died on California’s streets and highways each year since 2016, despite commitments at the state, regional, and local levels to reduce this toll. A growing number of safety experts have pointed to high speed limits as a serious obstacle to increased traffic safety. The basic rule for setting motor vehicle speed limits in California, and across the U.S. is the “85th Percentile Rule.” This rule is deeply ingrained, both practically and legally in transportation engineering practice, but is now being scrutinized by those committed to improving traffic safety. This research synthesis will review the history and evolution of the 85th percentile rule in traffic engineering practice, and critically analyze and summarize research to date on its effects.

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In California, driving is cheap and housing is expensive, and both these facts impede the state’s progress toward sustainability, safety and affordability. Efforts to solve these problems, however, often operate on parallel tracks: bold plans to increase housing production say little about congestion, and plans to address congestion rarely discuss the housing crisis. While these omissions are often understandable, they create a situation where policy proposals to solve one problem often flounder on concerns about the other one. Proposals to allow more development, even near transit, encounter resistance from neighbors concerned that development will bring congestion. Similarly, proposals to price roads encounter resistance based on the concern that California is already extremely expensive, and people have to live far from where they work because of the housing crisis. Somehow this policy gridlock must be resolved, if California will meet its stated goals of reducing VMT, reducing emissions, and building millions of units of housing.